Small
by LitMech
Summary: Time and Time Again, Jim feels like the stars are watching him pass by. Not visa versa.  *Older Work*


Unbeta'd.

I own nothing.

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Jim Kirk usually liked lazy mornings. Unfortunately in space you didn't have mornings _or_ night time so you slept generally any time at all. Currently the entire ship was still doing that, save for the Gamma crew manning the navigation, and Jim couldn't sleep. So whether he was up abnormally early, or had slept abnormally late, he wasn't sure. Nor, really did it matter, because either way he was awake and sitting in the observatory, feeling incredibly small.

Even at Warp Three, space seemed to fly by like snail taking it's time. Nothing rushed it, the velvet sheets just rolled by, glinting off of an unknown light source that speckled it with freckles of white and red, and (in the worrying occasion) blacker than black. Around each of those sparks of flint circled dark balls of dirt, or gas, some with life, some waiting for life to be born, some where the life had already died off.

Space was vast and always growing, and waited for no man. It was thoughts like these that got him in this position, as one of the youngest Captains in the fleet, 'controlling' one of the newest exploration ships. These vast, profound thoughts so uncharacteristic of his cocky smile and playboy swag, thoughts that McCoy often reminded him he didn't think really existed 'in that empty head of yours, Jim'.

But they did. Always had, always would. He would always be one man out in the deadly beautiful vacuum of space, the final frontier no one could conquer. He would be one tiny pinprick, on a tiny pinprick, around another tiny pinprick on the quilt sewn by 'God' or exploding _nothing_ or whoever made the entirety of everything. He wasn't important, in the long run. No one was, were they? Sure they could make a difference on a few balls of dirt. There would always be millions more to every one they help, they wouldn't make a dent in this place even if they had millions of years, billions, trillions. They were small within small within small and in an every growing span of empty nothing and new creation, they only got smaller.

Sometimes Jim depressed himself, and he glared at his reflection in the 'glass'. Spock had some kind of Jim-Depression-Radar because he _always_ just…appeared, when Jim was even almost kind of thinking about possibly being a little sad.

"You radiate displeasure, Captain," monotoned from behind him. Jim looked above himself in the glass and, sure enough, there were those heavy brown eyes deeper than space itself, staring back at him via reflection. He tried to smile, tried to brush it off like everything else that sucked in his life. It didn't work and he just ended up staring awkwardly at Spock's shoulder.

"I'm off duty, Spock. Call me Jim."

"Jim," Spock ventured, rolling the sound in his mouth like he wasn't quite sure if he liked it. The exact same way he did _every single freaking time_ they talked alone, even after six months of saying 'No really, call me Jim', Spock either refused to listen, forgot (which was about as likely as Jim spontaneously becoming a Romulan and killing everyone on the ship), or didn't care. Jim opted for option three. "What causes your distress."

"Have you ever felt like you'll never matter, no matter how hard you work, or how profound your legacy is?" He looked back up at the Spock-reflection's eyes, deciding to just get the honesty over with. He was to tired for their verbal sparring matches right now, to deflated. "No matter how many people you help, there will always be thousands, millions, trillions more who still need it that you'll never, ever get to?"

"You were reading your father's logs again," Spock said simply, as fact, and it was true. Always was, and if it was anyone but Spock Jim would feel a bit creeped on. Spock sat daintily beside him on the bench and finally they met eye to eye. "Even if there are multiple 'people' who require your assistance, Jim, you still make a difference."

"How?" Jim laughed, a bitter bark, waving an arm at the glass as he looked back at it. "Look at them, Spock. Millions of white lifes darting by we'll never see, we'll never help."

"It is not who you don't help that makes a difference, Jim," Spock offered. And Jim looked back, imagining there may be a softness to the chocolate hues. "It's the people you do help, who will remember you forever."

Jim didn't feel so small, sometimes, when Spock made him smile.


End file.
